Book Spotlight: Not in God's Name: Making Sense of Religious Conflict by Paula Fouce

“We're all praying to the same Divine, which is called by
many names or no name at all.” In her new book, NOT IN GOD’S NAME: MAKING SENSE OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT, Paula Fouce
searches for solutions to end the escalating violence between religious groups.
She
has lived and worked in many South Asian countries including India, Tibet, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, where she
experienced a variety of vast cultural and religious diversity.But Fouce came face-to-face with the destructiveness
of religious-based conflict while in India when Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

As a result of Gandhi’s murder, thousands of Sikhs were
massacred. Fouce escaped unharmed, but she was shaken by the explosion of
violence from a people who had treated her with care and compassion before the
death of their leader. The experience prompted Fouce to undergo a personal
quest to understand the reasons behind the intolerance. What was the
genesis of violent religion-inspired conflicts – the underlying chaosthat has led to majorviolent conflicts such as
the Crusades (1095–1291), the Partition of India in 1947, the
2009 Mumbai attacks, the September
11, 2001 attacks in the United
States, the 2015 Paris
attacks, and other religion-inspired conflicts?

In
NOT IN
GOD’S NAME: MAKING SENSE OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT, Fouce shares her
journey for spiritual enlightenment that began after she survived a car crash
in which she was thrown from the vehicle. After her recovery, Fouce traveled to
India in 1974 for a semester of
study focused on Hindu and Buddhist art. During an early trip, Fouce met Mother
Teresa. She returned to India after graduating from
college to continue her spiritual exploration, export art, and guide luxury tours.

NOT IN
GOD’S NAME: MAKING SENSE OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT discusses the histories of
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, as well as Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and other religions. Fouce spoke
with several leaders in the religious tolerance movement, including the Dalai
Lama; Mark Juergensmeyer, professor
of Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Dr. Karan Singh, a member of India’s Upper House
of Parliament; and Dr. Joseph Prabhu, a trustee of the Council for the
Parliament of the World’s Religions. In the book, the author asks probing
questions of faith leaders and scholars in order to devise solutions for ending
the violence among religious groups.

“Although there are differences, we can develop a deep respect for all faith
traditions that contribute untold richness to our civilization. Religious
tolerance is our greatest tool for promoting world peace,” Fouce says. She
identifies specific causes of religious intolerance and offers solutions for
bringing the world’s faiths together.

After
escaping the Indian religious riots in 1984, Fouce was “was struck with how
religion had been twisted and used to create dissention and violence, the
antithesis of its intention. My point of view is focused on how to bridge our
differences; and my book goes into detail, even describing the compassion
training that is now taught in many top universities.” Over the three-year
period that Fouce worked on NOT IN
GOD’S NAME: MAKING SENSE OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT, she used the
transcripts from interviews for the film documentary of the same title (which
was aired on PBS stations nationwide) and researched news stories of current
religious conflicts. “Education is sorely needed to ensure a peaceful world
where it is understood that diversity is not a threat or a detriment to one’s own
good. Diversity is to be celebrated,” Fouce says. “Our unquestionable right as human beings is to freely worship the God
of our understanding and to follow
that spiritual path whose practices support our doing so.”

Fouce’s purpose for writing NOT IN GOD’S NAME: MAKING SENSE OF RELIGIOUS
CONFLICT is to help the reader to
understand that there are solutions to religious intolerance. “How
do we change the minds of violent fundamentalists? This is the real task ahead,
together with preventing people from being attracted to such ideology in
the first place. Can we find a middle ground, a live-and-let live coexistence? Herein lies
the only answer to the challenge of creating
a peaceful future with acceptance. The continued existence of the human race
depends on it.”

For More Information

Not in God’s Name: Making
Sense of Religious Conflict is available at Amazon.

In the countryside outside Delhi,
our car sped past endless miles of yellow mustard fields gently rippling in the
warm breeze.It was 2002. My friend Arif
was taking me to visit madrassas, Muslim
religious schools,in the small agricultural
villages. A Kashmiri Muslim, Arif was keen to help me comprehend the causes of
religious bigotry. He too had witnessed strife between followers of different
religions. I had met him years before in India,
when we were both immersed in the peaceful lifestyle of the Himalayas.It was an idyllic time.

Turning off the main road onto a
dirt path, we dodged ancient bullock carts lumbering past. The air was clean
out here and I inhaled deeply. The village was peaceful and picturesque. Our
car pulled up to a rambling clutch of cement buildings. One was quite elaborate,
bearing a striking resemblance to a mini Taj Mahal.

As we climbed out, Arif said, “You
don’t know much about Islam, so here’s your chance, to ask this guy whatever
you want.”

“True, I’ve been living with Hindu
yogis, but this will be totally different.”

Yogis eschewed society’s distractions
to seek the answers to the deepest questions of life. They allowed me to
accompany them on the ancient footpaths to sacred shrines high up in the Himalayan
Mountains. I had spent time
photographing them for a book on yogis, Shiva
that I wrotewith my friend, Denise
Tomecko. “The way the Hindus embraced me, their kindness was overwhelming! They
invited me into their temples and homes, and offered me their only piece of
bread.”

“That’s when I know the snacks and
milk tea are coming. Even though they have so little.”

It felt a little strange accepting
the boundless offerings they showered on me. I had grown up privileged in Los
Angeles with loving parents, and had been fortunate to
attend the best private schools. “The yogis and lay people viewed me only as
spirit, as an expression of God.”

“That’s India,”
Arif laughed.

“You’re right, this is a good chance to talk to a Muslim holy
man!” Walking across the powdery dirt clearing surrounded by yellow mustard
flowerstowards traditional
buildings covered in intricate Islamic patterns, we were greeted by young Muslim
boys attired in colorfully embroidered baggy trousers and long loose shirts,
with skull caps, their huge smiles revealing perfect bright white teeth.A man with a long beard sitting on a hemp
cot, greeted us with the traditional “Salaam
halekum,” and motioned me to sit. Hindu, Muslim and Sikh villagers were
gathered at his feet in rapt attention as he sat relaxing outside.

Arif explained, “As the head of the madrassa, school they seek him out for prayers and healings, they
scribble their problems and those of loved ones onto those small slips of paper”.The faithful folded the scraps and dropped
them on the cot where the holy man prayed over them.

He requested one of his young students to bring tea, as well
as his massive, aged and dog-eared copy of the Quran. He stood and made a point of showing me passages in the holy
book about Jesus and Mary.

He read in Urdu and Arif translated, "If somebody had
leprosy, he would be healed. And he would go to the graveyard and tell the dead
people, "get up," and they would rise. And he would tell the people
what was in their house, and the house would be many miles, five hundred miles
away. He knew all, this was a symbol of Jesus Christ."

I asked him,
"What is Jesus called in the Quran?"

"Isa
Massi. There are two stories about Christ in the Quran. This is another one." He turned the pages. Arif
continued translating, "It's about Mary now. She was taking a bath in the
jungle, cordoned off with cloth. Gabriel came. She was under a date tree, and
she would just shake the tree and eat the dates during her pregnancy. And there
was a spring right there, where she used to get the water, right there in that place.
It's written in the Quran. And she
came with the child, and people sort of looked down upon her wondering, how,
where did she get this baby? And the child spoke at that time. He was ten days
old. ‘I am God's follower and I am sent by God, and I have come with the Bible,
the book of God. And I will always listen to my Mother.’”

"He
went to Israel,
that is where he was crucified. From there he vanished. And he's alive up
there," he pointed skyward. "And he'll come back again to us,"the Muslim man smiled.

I was touched by how he sought to find common ground with me,
pointing a bony finger at the Islamic script as if I could actually read every
word; he enthusiastically recited the passages aloud in his gravelly voice.

The wizened holy man then led us into the madrassa where a row of boys sat on the
floor huddled over a long, low wooden table supporting massively thick Qurans. Their haunting melodic voices
recited from the holy book for hours as they tried to memorize its’ words. “By
the time they are eighteen,” Arif explained, “they will know the entire Quran by heart.